Not as harsh as it looks

The Queens staff conspire to put an end to her newly-found habit of book-reading by packing her bookworm page, Norman, off on a prestigious course on writing literature. They don't tell her where he's gone, so she has no reason not to believe that, like all the other disappearances in her life, he is not dead.

"Norman of course had not died, just gone to the University of East Anglia, though, as the equerries saw it, this was much the same thing"

Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

The joy of parenthood

At best, there's lots of hard work and deprivation.

Dr Benjamin Spock, Baby and Childcare.

The kindness of strangers

One of a pair of murderous killers-for-hire has met a woman he likes. As he's about to leave town, he decides to leave her something, handing it to a prostitute his brother Charlie had been with the night before for safekeeping...

"I pressed a hundred dollars into her hand. 'I want you to give this to her when she comes back.'

She stared at the money. 'Jesus Christ on a cloud.'

'I will return in two weeks' time. If I find she has not received it, there will be a price to pay, do you understand me?'

'Mister, I was just standing in the hall here.'

I held up a double eagle. 'This is for you.'

She dropped the coin into her pocket. Peering down the hall in the direction Charlie had gone, she asked, 'I don't suppose your brother'll be leaving me a hundred.'

'No, I don't suppose he will.'

You got all the romantic blood, is that it?'

'Our blood is the same, we just use it differently.'

I turned and walked away. A half-dozen steps, and she asked, 'You want to tell me what she did for this?'

I stopped and thought. I told her, 'She was pretty, and kind to me.'

And the poor whore's face, she just did not know what to think about that. She went back into her room, slammed the door shut, and shrieked two times.

Patrick de Witt, The Sisters Brothers

It's the heat

"On the path, the heat of my own body hung heavily about me, suffocating, and the humidity was so thick that to breathe was almost to drink."


Edward Docx, The Devil's Garden,